23 - Iona #3
“As in… the pit of eternal suffering?” Iona asks incredulously.
“Some might agree with your description,” Hecate says. “Now come along before your souls acclimate to this place, and you won’t be permitted to leave.”
That seems enough to inspire Ariadne forward, her grip on Iona’s arm tightening even more when they enter the cave. The deeper they descend, the worse their anxiety grows.
“Is it very much farther?” Ariadne asks, her voice an octave higher than normal.
When Hecate gives Ariadne a distasteful look over her shoulder, Iona quickly says, “Forgive me, but was it truly necessary to bring us here?”
“Some things are better seen with one’s own eyes,” Hecate says.
When a subtle but distinctive gleam of light appears in the distance, Iona mistakes it for an exit and sighs with relief, until they approach the source of the glow.
The thinnest of spindly threads are woven in a desultory pattern, without any perceivable rhyme or reason.
Iona stops short when the threads become too densely woven to avoid, not wishing to become tangled up in them, but Hecate continues walking, her body going right through the threads as if they aren’t there.
“What… is that?” Ariadne asks.
“Come and see,” Hecate says, with slight amusement at their unease. “I have someone I’d like you to meet.”
Steeling themselves, with barely enough courage between the two of them, they step through the web of threads and reach an immense cavern.
The ceiling is nearly imperceptible from below; the walls made of black reflective stone and dripping with cool moisture.
Iona identifies the stone as obsidian, the same as Ariadne’s wand.
The threads are everywhere, looping and twisting around themselves, some taut and other slack. A structured tangle.
“Allow me to introduce Arachne,” Hecate says, pointing above her head. “The weaver of fate.”
Iona gasps, putting a hand over her mouth, when she sees what Hecate points to.
It is a bulbous black spider with long thin legs, not much bigger than a common spider on Earth.
The numinous silk pulses with life as it’s woven in a new, continuous pattern, Arachne’s thin legs manipulating it as she sees fit.
She never stops working even to acknowledge their presence.
“But... what of the Moirai?” Ariadne asks. When Iona looks to her in question, she says, “The fates, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.”
“They had their time, much of it in fact, but as the fabric of reality tends to do, it shifted into a new age. Immortals are not fixed in time, merely unhindered by it. After all, the Moirai were not always the conduits of fate, in the time before Nyx birthed them,” Hecate says.
I thought an immortal’s power would be preserved eternally just as their souls are , Iona thinks.
The Titans once held dominium over our world before the Olympians overthrew them , Ariadne thinks. Gods are not so permanent as they would have you believe.
Hecate glares, and Ariadne shrinks beneath her gaze.
“As a Titan myself, I can assure you of our vitality,” she says. “The cosmos are not stagnant. On the contrary, even the most steadfast of axioms can change in an instant.”
Ariadne stutters, “Apologies, I-”
Hecate ignores her. “Before we were ‘overthrown’ as you say, there were the primordial Gods and Goddesses, Nyx being among them. Her power persists to this day, regardless of who might reign in Olympus.”
“Primordial?” Iona asks, hoping to regain Hecate’s attention, finding her blatant animosity for Ariadne unnerving.
“The very first of our kind, the protogenoi. They are their elements personified. Nyx, for example, is not merely a Goddess of Night. She is night. Night is her. There is no separating the two,” Hecate says, with a lilt of reverence in her tone.
“Now tell me, Iona, do you know the story of Arachne?”
“Not well.” Iona keeps her eyes locked on the spider, wary of it jumping on her without warning.
“Arachne was once a human woman. Her gift was weaving, and, in a lapse of judgement, she compared her talent to Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, the very last Olympian anyone should risk angering. Apart from Hera, I suppose.” Hecate shrugs.
“Athena disguised herself and challenged Arachne to a weaving competition. She wove a tapestry depicting the Gods’ infidelities and follies, while Athena wove a tapestry of their triumphs.
Arachne’s tapestry was a flawless work of art, so perfect that even Athena could not deny it.
In her anger, Athena destroyed the tapestry and transformed Arachne into a spider, vowing that Arachne’s descendants would be cursed to weave for all eternity. ”
Iona gulps but has the smallest trace of sympathy knowing there is a soul trapped inside the creature, unable to escape her toil.
“For most, her story ends with her downfall but as you can clearly see, she was destined for more,” Hecate says.
“When Nyx heard of Arachne’s punishment, she took an interest in her.
You see, Athena was a tad overzealous in her use of power.
She’d also imbued the spider with her wealth of wisdom, though Arachne had no outlet for such a gift on Earth.
Rather than letting the spider waste away, Nyx gifted her with immortality and provided her a new eternal task of weaving fate, like the Moirai once did.
As the world grows older, populations surge and destinies become increasingly more complex.
Arachne uses her talent at weaving to make sense of the threads, that which lead us down our predestined paths, as no one else could.
And so, here she is, ever diligent in her work. ”
Arachne halts, her many eyes regarding the thread upon which she perches, then opens her jaws and severs it with a single bite. She lands on a thread just beneath it, as the thread she cut withers away into dust, its light and life extinguished.
“Oh…” Iona relents the death of the stranger, and wonders idly who it may have been, and why the spider determined that their life was at its end.
Hecate squints, searching the web for a specific thread, then points up to her right. “That is your thread, Iona.”
“It is?” She cranes her neck to admire the thin strip of glowing silk. “How strange...”
“It is tied to Ariadne’s thread, there.” Hecate points to a parallel thread, both of them knotted together. “You’ve noticed the unrelenting pull of fate connecting you by now, I expect?”
Iona flushes and nods her head. “Yes, we’ve noticed.”
“Quite rare,” Hecate says, “Not many find themselves in such an inevitable union arranged by fate. Who can say why she did it? Arachne’s wisdom is her own to comprehend.”
“I always thought the comet caused it,” Iona murmurs, recalling the blue streak of light that graced the sky.
“A comet? Perhaps that was the catalyst. The exorbitant celestial magic would have been all Arachne needed to tie your souls together,” Hecate says.
“This… is all that governs life and death, the rise and fall of empires, the thriving or suffering of countless millions of people?” Ariadne asks incredulously. “A spider?”
“As opposed to what?” Hecate tilts her head.
“Anything else!” Ariadne exclaims. “It’s no wonder the world is so rife with misery and injustice if fate is dealt out this way.”
Taken aback, Iona tries not to internalize Ariadne’s description of fate’s impact on reality, considering it was also what brought them together. She frowns when she accepts that it is also what perpetually tries to tear them apart and finds herself eyeing the spider with similar resentment.
Hecate shrugs, “The universe is hopelessly flawed, it is true. There were once many more heralds of fate, but all have fallen away over the millennia. Arachne is all that’s left, all that’s keeping the world in some sort of balance.
But think, even if I myself took on the role, you would only lament any hardships you’ve faced and blame me for them.
I suspect any answer you’d receive would only serve to disappoint you, whether Arachne was the weaver, or the Moirai, or any other entity imaginable. ”
Ariadne turns her eyes down to glower at the floor, overcome by a rush of memory that Iona resists the urge to view, deciding instead to take a step closer to Hecate.
“This is all truly enthralling,” Iona says, fighting to keep her voice even, “but what has this got to do with the Crone?”
Hecate points to another thread, no different from any of the others, that intersects with her and Ariadne’s own conjoined threads.
“This is the Crone’s thread.” Then she points to another thread set apart from theirs. “And this is mine. As you can see, our paths do not intersect.” She traces the air to show the many intersections between the Crone’s thread and theirs. ”You two are fated to oppose this enemy, not I.”
“And that alone is why you refuse to intervene?” Ariadne asks, appalled.
“Arachne’s wisdom is unparalleled, and her determination of the future is inevitable,” Hecate says.
“Even if I wished to defy fate, it is simply impossible. All will unfold as it was meant to. I shall assist if I can, but I cannot promise anything more.” Upon seeing Ariadne’s frustration, Hecate’s expression softens the smallest amount.
“It can prove difficult to accept your total lack of control over your place in the cosmos, but such is the encumbrance of mortality. Even immortals are not exempt from it. If you take issue with that, you may air your grievances to Arachne herself.”
Though the spider has eight tiny black eyes, not one even glance in their direction.
For a fleeting moment, Iona tries to read Arachne’s aura but finds none to detect.
Her transformation may have altered her soul as well as her physical form, or perhaps the Goddess of Night was wise enough to shield the aura away to prevent witches like her from predicting fate too accurately.
She must tell Samaira of this revelation, as it greatly alters her understanding of the sapphire ring’s power.
She wonders if it is connected to Arachne somehow, or perhaps it once showed all manifestations of fate when there were others spinning their patterns too.
Perhaps in time the artifact will give Samaira the wisdom to interpret the threads as the spider does, not only the ability to perceive their existence.
Iona grunts at a familiar pull against her back that brings her attention to the spider.
Arachne had jumped and lands upon her thread, the weight of her tiny body pulling the line taut.
They watch as her spindly legs pull again on their threads and to Iona’s horror and fascination, there is another ghostly tug that has her taking a step backwards.
Ariadne feels it too and clenches her fists as she watches the spider crawl away.
“I believe that is her way of saying hello,” Hecate says with an endearing smile.
“H- Hello,” Iona stammers, feeling rather foolish.
Ariadne’s frown becomes more pronounced. “And this is your way of telling us we are alone in our quest?”
“I never claimed to be your savior,” Hecate says sharply. “Use your power to defeat the evil that plagues you. You’ve an entire coven at your disposal, and magic enough to overcome this labor.”
“Is there no way to divert our fate to better our chances?” Iona asks, then gasps when Arachne flinches, her long black legs flailing as she nearly falls from her perch on one of the higher threads.
Iona holds out her hand to catch her, but Arachne rights herself, shakes off her malady, and continues on as if nothing had happened.
“The Crone is of a similar mind as you, Iona,” Hecate says gravely.
“That was her?” Iona’s blood turns to ice in her veins, making her shiver.
“I’ve witnessed Arachne’s frailty of late, and it deeply concerns me.
Her seizures started after the first of the rituals, when your grandfather was slain.
Though the Crone’s plan may still be obscured, we can be certain of one thing,” Hecate says.
“If she manages to impose her will over Arachne, to rewrite fate to her own benefit, then the Crone’s wrath shall indeed be an insurmountable reckoning.
In this, Moira spoke true. If the Crone is not defeated soon, her power shall exceed your ability to oppose her.
Then nothing shall stand in the way of whatever dastardly intent she has for your world, and mine. ”